Representing the Rural on the English Stage

Dr Gemma Edwards is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. Her work focuses on place, politics, and performance, particularly in non-metropolitan contexts. She has published on rurality in contemporary theatre, and her next project explores race, class, and English nationhood from 1945 to the present.

• Introduction.- Chapter One: Staging the English Rural.- Chapter Two: Rural and Nation in Mike Bartlett’s Albion.- Chapter Three: Simpler Times: Pre-Industrial Rural England in D.C. Moore’s Common and E.V. Crowe’s The Sewing Group.- Chapter Four: Muck, Cattle, and Pigs: Rural Labour in Nell Leyshon’s The Farm, Richard Bean’s Harvest,  and Bea Roberts’ And Then Come the Nightjars.- Chapter Five: White Open Spaces: Race and Rurality.- Conclusion.